Tuesday, September 12, 2017

"One Big Lie"

The latest round in their campaign was U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s disingenuous and falsehood-filled speech at the American Enterprise Institute last week. The speech is useful in one sense: it provides a handy summary of just about every creative and mendacious argument that die-hard opponents of the JCPOA have been cooking up since the agreement was signed. Unfortunately, it is neither an accurate guide to the agreement, to its current status, nor more importantly, to U.S. interests.

Among other things, Haley claimed — falsely — that the deal “gave Iran what it wanted up-front, in exchange for temporary promises to deliver what we want.” The truth is about 180 degrees from this claim: Iran gave up enriched uranium, destroyed 13,000 centrifuges, dismantled the Arak reactor, let the U.N. install monitoring devices, implemented the NPT Additional Protocol, and a host of other measures — all before the United States or anyone else began lifting sanctions.

She also claimed Iran was guilty of “multiple violations,” a lie belied by the fact that the U.S. government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly certified Iran was in compliance. Iran did exceed the negotiated 130-ton limit on heavy water twice (by less than ton each time), and quickly rectified the matter when this was pointed out. She repeated the usual talking neoconservative talking points about Iran’s “destabilizing” regional activities — which were never part of the agreement and in fact are a reason to be glad the agreement prevents Iran from getting the bomb — and raises the bogeyman of supposed “undeclared sites” that the IAEA hasn’t looked yet. In her twisted logic, there’s no way to know if Iran is complying until we’ve inspected every laboratory, military base, mosque, hotel room, maternity ward, and goat-herder’s shack in the entire country.

Christ on a crutch, these Republican lowlifes are using the same Busy/Cheney "WMD hoax" that became the trigger for the conquest of Saddam's Iraq and was instrumental in the recovery and expansion of radical Sunni Islamism ever since. Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix must be shaking his head in amazement that they would try the very same thing again, only this time with Iran in their crosshairs.